The Promise Price
by unamuerte
Summary: The coldest promise has its price. What happens when Nellie agrees to a secret deal with Sweeney Todd, on one condition? Both of them have their own dark reasons to ally together, but are they prepared to see the promise through to its end?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Another long series in the works here people. I have a plan for it, of sorts! It's set pre-oven Mrs Lovett, since I haven't ever attempted a canon long series fic. Sit back and enjoy the ride Thanks to AngelofDarkness1605 for her consultation with the very important task of choosing a title!**

**~The Promise Price~**

There was no easy way of walking at night. Shadows loomed on every city corner in the rambling expanse that was London. Shadows, and many things beside that were not shadows, but far worse. You would have to be a fool to believe you could wander freely here without your head constantly looking over your shoulder – unless you were the type of person who ran with the shadows.

Sweeney Todd and Nellie Lovett were such people. They did not walk down the length of Fleet Street in the hurried manner of some skulking businessman, going off to lose himself in the opium dens or whore houses. They were not vagrants or street walkers or orphans ambling wherever which ways. They walked with the silent confidence of having seen many shadows in their time, and knowing best how to confront them.

The moon shone with a full yellow glow that neither of them felt. There were few clouds, and the light it threw across the rooftops and upon the heads of that wandering couple glittered with the leftover dregs of yesterday's sun. Even from a distance, it was possible to see that the man and woman were intimate. They walked side by side, close together, he at times stopping to listen closely to some private word uttered in his ear. The man frequently took his hands from his pockets and clasped them behind his back. The woman latched onto his close arm, and with her free hand waved about wildly, as if it were a flag administered by a breeze. In fact, the first words spoken by the man that night were:

"There's no wind."

"As dull an' dry as a pile o' bones," Mrs Lovett agreed, casting her eyes into the street where a few figures lingered here and there, but nothing held her attention. She was much more interested in the way the moon, quite full, filled the barber's eyes full of untapped oceans.

"Why don't you stop this chit-chat, Mr T," she said suddenly, dropping his arm. "An' tell me the real reason wot you brought me 'ere for? Wot's on yer mind, hmm?"

He wasn't one to linger or wax lyrical about moonlit landscapes.

"I see the way he looks at you."

"Who?"

She knew, of course. There was only one man in the whole of London that had the power to drive envy in Sweeney Todd.

"The Judge."

They let the wind push them down the rest of the road. The baker was tired from a full day of chopping bodies, but she did not dare shut her eyes.

"He watches you, my pet." As if it were somehow acceptable, because she was not twenty-five with hair paper thin gold.

Playing coy was not in her repertoire, but there was a first time for every new experience, Mrs Lovett was fast discovering. "I never noticed," she lied.

They were now walking beyond their world, past St Dunstan's Church to the west where the shadows grew long and high.

They had come to the Temple Bar, where statue of the dragon stretched proudly before the Royal Courts of Justice. Once they passed through the stone gateway, they would be standing on the opposite side, in the Strand.

"I do believe we're at the barrier, Mrs Lovett."

She wasn't interested in barriers, real or imaginary. He was gripping her hand, and looking far into her, not at the coaches and men and inn noises descending all around them. "The quiet's stopped," she said, forgetting to breathe through her nose.

"Indeed." He wasn't going to relent.

"Out with it then," she said, still holding his gaze.

"I want to know…how far you are willing to go."

This time she didn't hesitate. "See that all depends, love, how far _you_ is."

"This isn't it a game –" he started crossly.

There was no jest left in her moon-bare form. "I know it ain't."

"So let's both be quick. The Judge _covets_ you."

She paused and turned, twisting her white wrist up to the air. On Fridays, when the Judge was finished at the courts and had only the weekend drag to look forward to, he would stop by the pie shop, and stare. The same lecherous stare that left spittle on his lapel. The same Lucy-adoring stare.

"Don't think for a minute I encourage that foul –"

"_I want you to."_

"Wot?" She stared at him. "Did I hear wot I –"

"The purpose of our…this walk, my dear, is that you entice him. He will not come to us, now that he suspects I am in league with the sailor boy –"

"_Anthony_, Mr T, that's his name, or 'ave you forgotten that too –"

"He will follow you, my dear, if you present an opportunity. Go to his house, if he is reluctant. Lure him here. One night is all I need. You bring him here, and I will slaughter him."

"That sounds very complicated Mr T. Couldn't you just write 'im a nice letter sayin' –"

"He won't fall for that. His weakness…" Sweeney shuddered, "is of the _flesh."_

It wasn't easy for Mrs Lovett to pretend she was at all comfortable being described as a bit of "flesh" for the Judge's disposal. Yet this was the time to strike, when the fever was riding high in the great useless thing's head –

"Well, my pet? Are you willing to do it?"

"Lord you is green, Mr T. I give you a home, feed you, let you set up shop for wot, nothin', an' now you think I'll sacrifice meself for your Almighty Cause? Wot you think I am, a bleedin' heart?"

"I thought you are on _my side." _His voice remained low, but that meant nothing. He might explode any moment.

"You want this revenge business that bad Mr T, you'll be prepared ter pay the price."

They turned and resumed their walk back down towards the Eastern end of Fleet Street, and the moon followed them still.

"How much, Mrs Lovett?" Sweeney supposed she wanted the money they were earning from the murders to go toward a cottage by the sea. Well, so be it. He did not care for money. It seemed a very fair exchange.

The words from the baker fell like coins into the drain. You did not see them fall immediately, and by the time they had fallen, it was too late to catch them.

"A child. I want a child, Mr T."

***~*~*~***


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I was surprised by the amount of interest, to be honest! Thanks to the following reviewers: F8WUZL8, BlinkYourEyes, Sakura Katana, MisssElphaba, EminentlyPractical, StarMimi, linalove, Crazygirl99, Nellie Lovett Gracey, AngelofDarkness1605, the sadisticalovett-nutcase, MireiLovett1846, ViudaLovett and James Luver.**

**To the unsigned reviewers: **

**Casey: Thanks for reviewing. I'm curious now to know what you were listening to!**

**Maya: Glad you like it so far. I hope to hear more from you. =)**

**Also, the rating could go up for certain chapters, as you may imagine. **

**~Chapter 2~**

"I don't want no smelly orphans Mr T, so you listen hard. I want a child grown in me belly, an' I'm not about to go prostitutin' meself to get it, you 'ear?"

The barber's mood had been brewing fouler by the minute. He met his reflection in the pie shop window, and wanted to smash his fist through the glass. "So you ask that I prostitute _myself, _is that it?"

"It's a bargain Mr T. We're both sellin' ourselves for profit 'ere."

He no longer heard her words. "Let's settle it then. Kick the boy out, since you've no need of orphans."

"Keep the boy out o' it," the baker instructed. She turned the key in the shop front and he brushed past her, eyes squinting in the inky darkness.

They both aimed for quiet. Toby lay sprawled in drunken slumber – it wouldn't do to wake him with shouting.

"Where's the ink?" He was in the parlour now, hunting in darkness for the precious liquid, like a wolf sniffing out its blood-prey.

"In the second drawer," she said, watching him from the kitchen. It was an apt picture, Mrs Lovett thought, to think of Sweeney as a wolf.

She removed the black veil from her head, and felt the edge of that strange wind travel up her arms. It blew suddenly through the front door, tossing her veil across the room. She shut her eyes briefly, hoping to capture the mood before it overcame her. The mood that led poets to throw themselves off cliff-tops, and women weaker than herself to purchase poison from the apothecary round the corner…

"A candle might help, love," she remarked, using the harshness of her own voice to bring herself back to the world of the mundane. She dumped her set of keys on the kitchen, and stole over to the half open door, shutting it quickly. She wanted that mood out of her now, as if it were a sickness buried in her very veins.

"Find me one then," he barked.

It would be foolish to pretend they had anything further to say to each other that evening. Any delight that they might have sought in each other's company had been drained by their demands.

He wanted the Judge.

She wanted a child.

Such desires could only end badly, which was precisely why the world continued to reach for them.

Mrs Lovett truly believed that people weren't happy unless they were unhappy. She went to the window, pressed her face against the glass, and ached for what she could not have outside. She was chained to the system of the pie-shop. Skin, cook, and carry to the customers. Only sometimes, when she had to go outside bearing the trays of pies and jugs of ale to the garden tables, did she catch a whiff of the tangible night, and the men and women who walked by, arm-in-arm, not ashamed to hide their affection.

And now the darkness was like ash, falling from every chimney over the filthy rooftops. No one moved in the hollow hours. Even the beggars were still in slumber, propped in the mud or against the shops. All except one fire, from a child at the end of the lane. Nellie focused intently on that creature. Even that girl-child burning fallen autumn leaves over a little seat of rubbish fire, even _she _dreamed she might escape her squalor. The little nit might pretend for a few small playful instances that she could fly up to the moon using the bare threads of those ashy leaves.

"Be like 'er," Nellie told herself, her breath staining the glass.

"Come here," he called from the parlour.

She came, the little girl all but forgotten.

The glow of the candle from the room cast shadows over his coal eyes, where even the bravest men swore they saw the pits of hell.

He saw her come towards him, her pale skin like paper. No remnants of flour tinged her skin. In this tricky light, she looked less like a woman, and more like an unholy vision conjured up to fool him.

"A contract?" She sat down wordlessly in the worn seat, the paper spread bare before them.

He nodded. "Should either of us…" He had meant to say, if either of them decided to break their promise, the contract would still stand.

"We won't." She took the ink pen and began to scribble furiously.

Her neat hand fascinated him. He had never held much store in the baker woman's intelligence, and it surprised him to find she was educated enough to be able to write the flowing sentences she did now. She dipped the nib frequently, until at last the paper was set to dry under the candle light.

That was where his admiration ended. He scanned the page, but the words barely registered. He could think only of her foul request. Why would the woman need a child? She already had the boy – and he ate and drank enough for two healthy children. Didn't she know what a torment it was for him? If he gave her a child, the bastard would grow strong, while his own girl was still locked up at the mercy of the Judge.

"Love. I've signed. You sign _'ere._" She turned her head up at him, as if she were offering it to him, like some pagan sacrifice round the bonfire. The clear radiated look she gave him communicated her feelings clear enough. And he knew. It had always lingered beneath the surface, but Sweeney had never had the patience nor the desire to deal with it. It made him a little sick, to recognise the intent in her stare. It was not the look of a woman. It was not modest.

"I don't know…" He was sick inside. The scraps of dim floral carpet repulsed him, as did the wallpaper and junky china trinkets on the dark cabinet and coffee table; the misery of the untouched piano and the arm chairs with the stains down their backs.

She watched him expectantly, waiting for him to falter. Her presence suffocated the small space between them. He was tempted to set the paper alight then and there. It was too much to ask of a man. If Sweeney had still been a man, and not more of a monster, he would not have agreed to it. He would have walked to the Judge's house that night, waited for the old pervert to step outside in the street in morning's light, and murder him on sight. Then Johanna would be freed from her cage, and he from Mrs Lovett's bondage.

"Is there somefin' I should know, Mr T?" She held the ink pen aloft, as if daring him to fail.

"We'll discuss this properly in the day-time, my pet," Sweeney counter-acted in a business-like fashion. After all, revenge was his _life_ now. He had paid the cost of Judge Turpin's lust for too long, and he deserved to see that foul excuse for a human being suffer as intensely as possible in the prelude to his inevitable death. The promise of a beautiful woman, as Mrs Lovett undoubtedly was to other men, was one of the cruellest, and most effective traps he could set to bait the Judge. And in exchange, he would only have to perform a disgusting, but _brief _transaction of the flesh.

She tapped him lightly on the arm with the paper roll. "Done." He tensed at her touch.

The barber signed the paper.

Mrs Lovett snatched it up and tied it instantly with a red velvet cord. He saw it disappear into the third cabinet drawer, but made no more comment. Benjamin, and all the light and goodness and humanity that he bore inside him, was rotting dead in a cell somewhere back in Botany Bay, and would be permitted no more say in Sweeney Todd's business. Mrs Lovett was by no means intelligent, but she certainly wasn't stupid. She knew what she was getting herself into. Making pacts with dead men was a deadly business, and if she expected him to conduct himself like a gentleman from woe to go – she was more deluded than he could ever imagine.

"Happy?" he said with a grimace, and was surprised to find her eyes stoked by something akin to tranquillity.

"You might say that," she said, getting up as he moved the chair out of her path in mock chivalry.

She left him in the parlour, oblivious to his dark thoughts.

**~*~*~**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Thanks to: JamesLuver, MisssElphaba, Nellie Lovett Gracey, MireiLovett1846, StarMimi, Viuda Lovett, the-sadisticalovett-nutcase, Stargatecrazy, F8WUZL8, linalove, Dorryen Golde, AngelofDarkness1605, and TrixieFirecracker. Each of your reviews inspired me!**

**~Chapter 3~**

"Why are you crying?" The man removed his night cap and sat the candle on the window ledge. His posture was immaculate, even so late into the night. Just as if he were presiding over an imaginary court room, and she were the accused.

The girl stared, wordless. More bird-like than her mother, her darting eyes flew to the window. And her curls were golden rivers of heaven in such light – if there _was_ such a paradise where the good and just were rewarded.

He lowered his voice. "I heard you. Don't lie to me, child."

"There's a witch down there. On the pavement. She won't go away."

She spoke with no more than a child's whisper, as if she were a woman coaching herself to be a girl. The cumbersome corset kept at bay any splaying flesh, and the layers of blue lace and satin cream were her armoury with which she faced the world. In her mind, at least, Johanna could dream she was Joan of Arc, leading herself away from a kingdom of crushed dreams. This was her true sorrow - if she'd been born a boy, he would no reason to stare at her through the peep-hole. After all, he had left no son to inherit his crumbled world. The only heirs seemed to be phantoms. Johanna knew it well - a ghost woman stalked the corridors, leaving trails of yellow flowers. She knew, because the servants were always muttering about "the beautiful spectre who haunts Turpin nightly." The rumour was that she would be the death of him - in the end.

And these were not suppositions. Johanna had heard the noises herself. The fleeting scratches against her door, and just yesterday, the blood spots at the foot of the dining table. The girl was convinced that her guardian had been deeply attached to a woman in his past, and through tragic circumstances, this woman had died. Yet so great was their attachment, the woman had followed him from beyond the grave.

"May I sit with you, by the bed?"

His direct question startled her. He very rarely spoke to her in such close proximity. A thin smile leaked from the corners of his mouth.

She kept the pillows propped up between them, nodding: "Yes. _Sir."_

"Nightmares are man's curse, Johanna," he said, more gently than he'd intended. "You must use your _will_to overcome them." He spoiled her too much, but then _something_had to make amends for the terrible curse he'd placed on that ruined creature wandering up and down the length of Fleet Street, searching for kindness that no one wished to bestow.

"It is no nightmare, I witness you, sir. Go to the window yourself – you will see."

The Judge raised a brow. It was rare to see Johanna so adamant. He was lucky to receive three words from her at breakfast, and now that the Beadle was out sight she wished to claim all his attention. Should he reprimand her for her childishness? He glanced at her milk-white breast. She was no longer a child in certain respects – he had watched her blossom for over a year now.

Temptation led him to the window instead. His ward was right. It was no phantom – the child, it seemed, was not all lace and sugared frosting. Skin against glass, Turpin contemplated Joanna's walking nightmare. There _was_a figure there, wandering down below. Not wandering, but purposed steps, as if the cloaked woman were enacting some primitive dance. And it was a woman. Turpin knew from the nature of her sprightly, almost spiral walk. No beggar woman lingered there, beyond the spluttering lamplight, where darkness reigned supreme. This was a different specimen altogether.

"Will I hunt out the monster for you, Johanna?"

Niceties often frightened her. His broad smile startled her, as did the gentle kissed delivered atop her head. He was not plotting anything – she saw that clearly from the gleam in his eyes. He truly was going to exorcise that demon on the street, solely to comfort her. Was there something of a father in him, yet?

*** * ***

No need to rouse the Beadle.

He would scare off the whore (for that was no doubt what the creature was) and turn into bed. He did not like to walk that avenue at the best of times – it reminded him of when he'd been a young man, with dreams in his breast, and an eye for the yellow-haired beauty with the ribboned bonnet crowning her head. Every day now he passed the same corners, and saw the vestige of her youth in the old crow's flimsy string hair and glazed over gaze. His sins were stamped over the city – this one especially so, for not only did it follow him, it lingered at the scene of the crime, as if the rotting madness in the woman's brain could still recall the cruelty inflicted on her more than five and ten score years ago.

"Who are you?"

Under the little lamp light left, he held the candle aloft at the figure in the middle of the laneway. Its features were impossible to discern. He saw only the burgundy cloak, and pools of velvet folds about exposed arms. He floundered in the mystery of this night visitation.

"Show yourself, or risk the full arm of the law!"

The figure stepped forth, undeterred. Before he could raise the alarm, white hands lifted the cloak and let it fall from her face, to reveal the full splendour of the woman hidden beneath. The death pale face, coated with the thick rimmed fullness of immodest eyes, and lips equally uneven and glorious. It was all too familiar. He knew her instantly then. Not her Christian name – such intimate details were of course, not his to possess. But the woman was already _his_, in a manner of speaking. He could confiscate her shop from her, sentence her to gaol, have her _hung,_if necessary, should he feel so inclined. He had some power to influence her.

"I shouldn't be here," she whispered, yet her eyes did not scan the street, or dart away. They remained fully on his, as if this moment between them had been rehearsed many times.

He sought no more words from her. She _shouldn't_have been there, nor should he have lingered. A woman who undressed herself in the street was hardly a woman. The cloak fell around her elbows, and underneath he appraised those bare shoulders. It was a dress sculpted to invite a man's wandering eye; a strange concoction of orange and black frills.

His hand reached forward of its own accord. It wanted the skin for its own.

"Madam," was all he could manage, dry-throat and dull. He remembered Johanna upstairs, and pulled back instinctively onto the safety of the steps. He would not surrender to this _thing._

Yet she would. Mrs Lovett bolted forward, as if she aimed to run past him. Before he knew it, the sensation was on his lips; _she_was on his lips, this white-devil woman injecting flour and her own acrid blood and exotic smell into his breath. He opened his eyes, expecting hers closed. They weren't. They faced each other in rapture, two creatures fully conscious of their devouring the other.

At last, when they broke, her eyes went briefly to the cracks in the steps, as if contemplating what she had done.

"Come again tomorrow," he implored.

**~*~*~*~*~*~**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Again, I'm not dead. I haven't forgotten about this fic. I'm back in action, so to speak. And so are these two, it seems.**

**~Chapter 4~**

"I want – _you owe _me a kiss."

Sweeney stared at the bedraggled creature coming in from the storm. He didn't ask her to repeat it. His ears were already blistering at the prospect of the request. It was too much – far too much. A man's quarters were private – couldn't she see this dim, craggy little barber shop was all he had, his world away from the world?

Her wild eyes swept the room and held the look of gravel inside. The cloak fell away. Rain had soaked through onto her bare shoulders – the rest of her was poorly clothed for the weather – but then Mrs Lovett never made a consistent effort to dress suitably for bitter London cold. It was her duty to live light and colour and fluff – not delve into the heavy drowning weight of fabric gloom and cloaks.

He shook off the fetid coat from his barber's chair. "I owe you nothing."

The thought of touching her made him ill. Now he knew a little of how it must feel to be one of the street whores, shrinking at the touch of all those eel-ish men, but knowing they would eventually agree to their touch anyway. He averted those heavy, heavy eyes of hers. Sometimes they were so large and full, they reminded him of black moons, swamping out all the light in their world with their own strange light. Her desire there was not for him. Like everything in this world, Mrs Lovett had her price. He could not blame her in a way. She had gone barren all these years – condemned to live the shadow life of a detested widow – picking up scraps from the street and turning the dregs of leftovers into pies not even the beggars wanted to eat. She had lived as loveless a life as he – so many, many years. It was enough to make him long for a deep pit, a hangman's noose, a high cliff – anything to end it all now. But he didn't, because he was exhausted – too tired even for that. He could meet death later. Just now, he wanted the Judge more than any gentle woman's touch – not that this creature standing before him could ever be accused of being gentle. She was barely a woman.

"After wot I 'ad to do with that _excuse _for a man – I deserve a kiss from you, Mr T."

He turned his back to her, knowing it was futile anyway. He would kiss her, because it was easier in the end to deliver this one request, then have her badger him night and day. But there was nothing specified in her request that he had to be _nice._

She moved towards him, breaching the difference as he knew she would. They were both broken souls hankering for death, really. Mrs Lovett was in love with the drug of suffering as much as she loved the idea of a child. Besides, she wouldn't know what to do with one anyway, if she had one.

"Snuff the candle," he demanded. He didn't want to look at her in the candle light and be reminded. Instead, he wanted to drown himself in the darkness, and the memory of his wife's golden fleece hair. He could conjure angels in pitch black, but not the sickly taper light of cheap candles bought by a mad baker woman.

"It's not too late to renounce this, you know." He let the suggestion hang in the air. Secretly he was hoping the baker would relinquish her claim – and in some gesture of pitiful kindness come up with another way to the Judge. There had to be another way. He had thought it a thousand times over in his head, and although he had initially agreed – this _situation _had him more than ill at ease. The idea of investing time in human touch again – and it was truly unavoidable, given the circumstances – made him more than ill. It would effectively mean undoing all his hard work.

For years, he had practiced the art of dying inside. This far, he had succeeded spectacularly. He had managed to avoid any sort of human sentiment or kindly feeling for fifteen years. There were only brief times when his resolve weakened.

They would pass each other on the stairs, and her hand would brush his accidentally. Or she would be there with a warm cup of tea on the landing, and not so accidentally touch the back of his shoulder with her fingerless gloves – and for those brief moments, even through his coarse shirt, he could imagine how that odd, pallid skin of hers would feel through the fabric. He was reminded, just barely, of the time when he had once shown his bare flesh to another human being, and let them see deep into his soul. That time was gone.

This time, it would be mere transaction.

Sweeney Todd was adept at survival – he would survive one brief horrid night with this woman just as he endured all the rest. He would escape to that sacred dreamscape inside his head – the one where only he could enter and wander fresh and unscathed along the moonlit hills where Lucy danced barefoot and free like a faery child – yes, a fool's dream – but then that piece of Benjamin Barker shoved deep inside his unconscious head had always been a fool.

It was a harsh exchange – a judge for a child.

But it was a harsh world.

"I keep telling you my love," he said, battering her hair into the wall with his upturned palm.

She wanted love – he would give it to her, then. He would prove to her that her desires were not worth the want. In the end, the only thing that mattered was the ashes of your dead will. Your will to heap destruction onto the heads of better men – the quicker she learnt that, the better off they'd both be.

"Love is dead, my pet," he instructed, smoothing back her hair so that her bare forehead lay exposed to the trails of fragile moon flitting through the uncurtained windows. "And hate –" he bent in toward her neck. There was only roughness in his touch. "- conquers all."

She shuddered. The contract had begun.

But when it was complete –

He let his mind rove into a world away from sacred dreams, to the dark hell where Sweeney's mind concocted devils and deaths.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: No excuses for my absence here! Thank you for being so patient. I've missed you all and the fandom, and I can't wait to read everyone's wonderful projects! Scgirl-317 mentioned one of my stories, and possibly her own, have been stolen and posted on other websites, so I'd just like**** other people to be aware the same thing could be happening to their work.**

**Merry (Belated) Christmas to you all! I spent part of mine in hospital (after I cleverly managed to sit on my friend's hair straightener and passed out in the bathtub!) **

**~Pet Part 1~**

"I'm your pet, Mr T, and you can't treat your pets disdainfully. The bible teached us that!"

She was mewling and hanging on his door one moment – the next, she was leaping across the room, arms wrapped around his neck like one of those pathetic cherubs you see suspended from the church thresholds.

Sweeney Todd spat. "I think I used my last copy for toilet paper, my dear. But yes, you are my pet, if you like, in a figure of speech. On one condition."

"What's that?" She said adoringly, blinking up at him with jetty orbs.

"You get off my arm. Fast."

She scrambled to the floor, the darkness thankfully masking her marble flesh.

He didn't want to see that part of her body yet. He wasn't ready, whatever part of the contact he'd signed. He hoped he'd never have to see it. Perhaps she'd fall off the stairs, or fall down them, better yet, and break her neck in a freak accident. But then he'd never get to the judge. He'd never have his revenge. Lucy would lay a faded yellow waste in some unmarked grave somewhere. The unkind angels were looking down on him, shaking their heads. He'd have to move fast, if he wanted to wipe himself and people like Turpin from the earth and leave space for kinder, better people like his darling love. And Johanna. His daughter could only have the life he dreamed if he did this – this one, foul act with Mrs Lovett. It only had to be once, surely? Wasn't that how these things worked?

It had been too long since he'd had to consider these sensitive matters. With the sheets over his legs, he passed his right hand over his left, and wondered that it was even warm. It felt like another man's hand. It didn't seem like his. None of his flesh belonged to him, really. How could he be expected to do anything possibly resembling warmth and transaction of _that _kind, if he couldn't even feel himself? Perhaps, he considered wisely, that was best for everyone at this point. If he felt nothing, the less he'd be betraying his Lucy. The easier it would be for him to bear. As for the baker – he wasn't even trying to convince himself. He didn't care.

He considered his options. Her lying there so desperately on the floor – it would be relatively simple. He'd observed animals, and prostitutes – which were more or less the same thing, carrying out similar activities outside the streets in alleyways and such filthy places. Why couldn't he just do the same thing - get it over and done with, as they crudely say? But something in him prevented him. It was too beneath him, he decided, ignoring the odd feeling running through the back of his head.

Now that she was on the floor, it was only a matter of picking her up, carrying her out the door, dumping her on the floor, and locking it.

"You _owe me, _Mr T. Don't you forget, neither!" The banging started, and went for half the night, after which he presumed she'd passed out or retreated for the next round.

Eventually, Sweeney decided it in his best interest to check on his investment. He noticed the blue butterflies fighting on the window sill – or were they moths? Either way, he saw their black spots, feelers and thin hairs, right down to the delicate coils on its lower wings. He stood over her patch-work bed.

"You won't murder me," she whimpered, groping for him blindly in the terror pit of half-wakefulness.

"No," he promised, smoothing her hair down in an odd slip of what he knew to be right, "not yet," he nodded, tucking the sheet in tightly in case she was tempting to roll over and vomit on herself in her sleep.

"My Mr T," he heard her murmur, and something inside him choked.

It all started on a Wednesday, because from now on, the barber knew Wednesdays, just like Judge Turpin, were pure evil.

Every living creature with a mind in or out the gutter knew that Wednesdays were dead days. It rained everyday in London, but particularly so on Wednesdays, and with the chimneys pumping out their lung-clogging crap in unquantifiable amounts, nobody liked to go out and about window shopping – or breathing, to be honest. It was barely worth the effort to drag yourself out of bed, wipe down the counter top, and switch the sign on the shop to "open" - though no one was really all "there" to serve anyone, at any rate.

But since the baker had the very lowest expectations when it came to regarding people – she didn't have to worry about being disappointed, did she? She'd already learnt life's very important lessons on smashed hearts and wot not from one of Fleet Street's finest and best examples of human beings – a man who'd been up fighting his demons in the wee hours of the morning. She'd heard him pacing the floorboards above her room. Sweeney Todd had the talent to turn restlessness into a mathematical equation. To his credit, he had a lot to concern himself with these days. Their little contract, for one.

"Hmm...contract," she found herself mumbling out loud. Her head slunk belligerently into the flour and meat droppings. She hadn't slept at all. She'd demanded a kiss, and a kiss she'd been delivered! "Hardly a kiss worth rememberin'," she grumbled, rubbing her neck where she was sporting a bruise. A black satin ribbon wrapped around the base hid the evidence, but it's existence was enough to put her in a foul mood. A few nights before she'd have been dancing across the kitchen at the prospect of his touch – now the thought of anything but the cool bottle of gin against her skin was giving her the creepy crawlies.

"No customers today, mum!"

"And why might that be?"

"I'm dead," she blurted, and the boy's brows shot up to the ceiling.

"Mum," he said, grasping her forehead, "you feelin' all right, I mean, all _there _in the head?"

When she was bored, the baker liked to amuse herself by imagining various funerals in her head – all her own, mind you. It was boring imagining other people's wake's – she only turned up for the free feed, the gin, and the lucky chance that she could nick a gentleman's cufflinks or a woman's rose-gold bracelet from the open coffins. And her funeral, with Mr T all done up nice and neat wif his hair all slicked back, an' he'd have to say his goodbyes by leaning over her coffin, she done out all perfect and red lipped...

"'Course," she said dismissively. "Wot say you have a drink with me, me dear?"

Toby looked at her wide-eyed, snatching up the bottle as sparks of rabid sun sent odd flecks through the rain-splattered windows. "You set your curlers on real tight on yer 'ead last night or somefin'?"

"No, lad. Just got some vision, wot be all. Let's drink. Health, hell and happiness, eh?" She raised her glass, and some of the feverish rays seemed to be caught there too.

Upstairs, the silence was heavier than a churchyard.

"Say," she said, when they were both bleeding drunk and they'd counted about seventeen people walk down the street by noon, and that was it, "wot you think Mr T's grave would read?" A blank look came over his mum, and Toby knew she was thinking hard. If Mr Todd had an epitah on his grave, it would read: "revenge slaked." Slaked was an interesting word. Mrs Lovett liked the harshness to it. Even if he died in the process, and never actually did enough throat-cutting to satisfy himself, she knew it would make him feel a tad better knowing someone thought of him enough to put a decent, honest epitah, instead of some rubbish about being a wonderful, loving, husband, which just couldn't be said in the past fifteen years.

"Sick-in-the-head, bleedin' old tyrant," Toby said delightfully, rolling the gin carelessly around his tongue.

"Watch your mouth, lad!" She smacked him half-heartedly on the hand, more than inclined to agree with him just then.

When the "closed" sign was finally settled snugly against the rain-smeared glass on the shop front, it was already 7 o' clock, by which time the boy was out cold on the kitchen floor, and Mrs Lovett well beyond ghoulish drunk. She clambered up the stairs fruitlessly, like a fly about to settle down to feast on the dead.

**P.S. I'm aiming to update every three days in the holidays, and when school resumes every Monday, unless I have any more wrestles with hot hair equipment!**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Because some people are born to live in delusion!**

**Lovinett: Glad you like it! Fortunately I've gotten off my bruised petunia to write some more!**

**the-sadisticalovett-nutcase: Yeah, I made it confusing since it was night and dark. Sweeney threw her out of his room, pretty much. Sorry for the confusion!  
**

**gingerbritishgypsyelf: Sincere apologies I kept you waiting more than 3 days! Thanks - I think my writing style is convoluted full stop!**

**AngelofDarkness1605: Writing until late and shopping sprees? I think that's awesome! =D And napping! This is my break from endless lesson planning!**

**MireiLovett1846: Equally, my dear, have I missed your tantalizingly clever reviews! They always have so much life and colour! Hurrah and a happy 2011 to ye, Mirei!  
**

**~Deluded Wednesday~**

It's funny how imagining things often enough makes them come true. Like dreams, for instance, Mrs Lovett thought, stamping her soaked-through boots on sodden grass. And funerals.

Such a shame it was the wrong funeral. She'd been praying for the Judge's. Oh well. The rain snaked through her undergarments. He held her hand. Only for moral support, mind you. And rumours about their being half-married and all.

Sweeney and the baker at the funeral. Some random man's funeral. Someone who'd eaten too many pies and had a heart attack on Friday night at the shop. They'd gone ter show their support. Might look a bit suspicious otherwise.

Imagining things often enough made them true. She imagined market-shopping with Mr T on Tuesdays.

And Wednesdays. And men drunk on ego. Mrs Lovett watched them all side-long out of her eye, all decked out in their black funeral best. They chortled and celebrated. Not to mourn, of course. The women too, puffed up like pastries with their feathers sticking out of their heads. The baker snorted. She was hardly in a position to pass judgement.

"I'll kill him, kill him, kill kill kill kill kill him, YES, my pet. Kill him. Kill. Kill Him. Kill the Bleeder. Kill -"

She silenced her dream lover with a swift pinch in the underarm. "Now you shut it afore you get us both locked in Bedlam, or our heads sent straight to the choppin' block."

He opened his mouth. "But to kill – the blood – the taste – Nellie, to _kill."_

"I know love," she said soothingly, rubbing his shoulder, "I know. For a poetic soul such as yerself, you're a bit low on words at the moment, ain't you, Mr T?"

Not a tear shed, to be expected. The churchyard was streaked green with weed. It was supposed to be all grey, you see. Rain pouring from the trees, flowing up from the creek floodingly. The whole thing was over in under twenty minutes. They didn't even see him go into the grave.

Even still. He'd poisoned the whole thing. Him. The thing that crawled outta the sea.

The Judge was there at the front of the crowd, constantly turning around. Smirking like some deluded priest who thinks he's just witnessed some saintly apparition beamin' down a hill. He was pricing her mentally, was he? Or picturin' her naked. Whichever, it made her feel filthy and ill.

The air was stung with sour taste – or was death itself she could taste, warm on her tongue? No, no love. It was just a bit o' blood. She'd bitten down hard on her lip. Forgotten she weren't in her room no more, chewing on dead fruitless hopes. Oh well. Better out here where it was light and cloudy, than the dim little hole she called home. 'Bout as cheery as a funeral parlour, frankly.

She bit her tongue again – instead of gasping. Him – circling through them crowd like a fattened vulture. Well-heeled and dripping with sick articulation. The phony claw of the law.

"_The Judge," _breathed the familiar whistle down the back of her neck.

Men – all royal highnesses in their own head! She turned her head briefly. Satin ruffles brushed her wayward curls. Thick blue beads swung into her skin. And just a scent – a tincture mind – of flower perfume. What kind of flower, she didn't bloody care. The baker had lived too far in deep in amongst the city scum to know how real crushed petals smelt. But she could guess that it would smell just as good as heaven.

"Wot you plan ter do, Mr T? Throttle 'im in broad daylight? Bash 'is brains out?"

"No." Sweeney placed a false arm around her arm. He didn't mean his grief, even when it was fake. He wouldn't have bothered neither – if she hadn't coached him specifically on Grief Ettiquette when they'd rushed out the door that morning. Pies, after all, never slept.

"Do you believe you can cure him? Magically heal him?" Turpin's sneer was barely audible.

"Yes." She didn't hear her own reply. It came as breath on wind – drowned out by far greater sounds.

"So..."

"Yes?"

It was like chewing marbles. She'd done it once as a girl. Nearly broke her teeth. They made arrangements, shook hands. Rather, he kissed her hand, tipped his hat, and trundled off, Beadle trailing behind.

Mrs Lovett shook her head. That man really needed ter get himself a dog.

A man pacing the pavement, delved too deep in his own nightmare slumber. He walked so easily amongst the dead, it was easy to forget he was there. The mourners passed around him – part of their own Sunday tide going toward a shore of teas crumpets cakes happy songs and silly dances – anything too shake off the odd funebrial taste. Soon, they'd be home.

In the end the man was the only one left. Besides the other mourner.

"Mr T!" She caught up just on the corner. He didn't listen. Or see. He walked under water, holding his breath as the heavy tides swept in to drown them all.

There was something she could do – something before he reached the corner – she couldn't stand – couldn't take being near that slimy old man – slipping on hour old ice, she snatched the barber's razor hand.

"_Benjamin,"_ she said, breaking him out of the spell. It honest-ter-god was the magic word!

His brow creased. He shook of the deluded, white hand. "What are you doing here? Where's the Judge?"

"I can't see 'im now," she panted, cupping his shoulders in her hands. "On important business, he is. We made an appointment tonight though. 8 o 'clock sharp, he says, and wait for the streetlight to go out at the end o' Fleet Street."

"Perfect time to slit his throat," Sweeney said, standing up stiff-backed all of a sudden. His eyes shone. "I'm coming with you."

"Mr T," she pleaded, looking along the end of the streets where the crowd milled around hazy threads of light thrown from the shops, "we got hours yet till then. You can come. But neither of us is in the right mind ter head home. Not in that hell. Let's get a drink somewhere, just you an' me."

He'd be caught in an instant - all those rivers of blood! She had no intention of letting him walk anywhere _near _the Judge. He didn't know that, o' course. Poor, simple soul.

And so a drink magicked into a coffee – with the two of them sitting right there in the corner of the throne, staring out of the brightness onto the street outside. The barber seemed caught in yellow fog. Was he smilin' more in the light? She wondered. Or was it hopeless? How could she wake him up to her?

"I couldn't find Lucy's grave," he said, breathing hoarsely into the table.

Of course he couldn't. "_Of course you couldn't,"_ she echoed, patting his hand.

Then the coffee arrived. It was a flamin' carousel ride, Mrs Lovett thought, smiling up at the waiter. She was on it – he was sitting on the dumb animal in front – and they'd never, ever get off.


End file.
